Quote Originally Posted by Ibrahim View Post
the people along the coast a mix of Arabs, settlers from other areas, and berbers. the desert is purely Berber territory. the reason that is so is because the Arabs settled in the cities after they had conquered them. they even founded a few: Qayruwan, in Tunis, and Tunis city itself, are both Arab in origin. they also settled in Lybia, Tunis, morocco, Mauritania, western sahara, and even Spain, siciliy, and malta (hence the language known as maltese). but it is worth pointing out that they were never the majority-just a minority that influenced their neighbors.

as a result, Algerians do speak arabic-allbeit a dialect that is unintelligeable to me (my dialect is a levantine one).
They also have a lot of french loanwords, which of course makes it more complicated to understand.
BTW you can trace your linage to the middle ages?! You're a lucky one.